i donno if its quite that dramatic, i.e. the monostaries keeping record and thus without them we wouldnt have the written word. you forget about the role of ireland in the dark ages, and europe isnt the only place in the work that was civilized, in fact after the fall of rome all of europe was like a backwater area to the world, europe was like the 3rd world, now one went there and no one cared. the centers of the world were china, india and the middle east.

its funny i took a course on world history and how the world has changed from 1400- 1945. and something that i realised, a connection i wouldnt have made without that course though i knew the facts. europe can owe its rise to power to the black plague. WHAT, NAW, not the black plague. yes the black plague. what people dont know is that the plague came from the east, its thought that it first surfaced around the black sea, and at the time europe wasnt a big tradeing area so it didnt go there till later. china was, and so the plague first struck in there. at the time china was like the US of the world only a 1000 times more powerful then the next most powerful. think of a world of canada's with one US that was what it was like at that time. india might have been like england, but thats about it. the chinese owned the indian ocean where all the trading took place, and they had a massive navy, like massive in the sense that it was bigger then the rest of the world's navy. now also at the time china was ruled by the mongal empire which loved trade, and thrived on it. with the arrival of the plague thousands died and there was a huge rebellion in china. they eventually overthrough the mongal rules and took over. the people of china blamed trade for the black plague and so they shut themselves off from the world, they dry docked the navy and within 5 years it had rooted away. the global power that was china was gone. now just as this happened who should happen to figure out how to sail around africa, oh the portugese. they fell into the power niche that china had left and became super rich, spain followed and so did france and england and all of europe, eventually we had colonialism. the rise of the west.